systemd discussion

[JB]

夜神 岩男 <supergiantpotato <at> yahoo.co.jp> writes:

> 
> Sorry, JB, I usually avoid posting (hence the trash email address), but
> not today because this hit home.
> 

Well, we are happy we woke you up :-)

> ...
> There are too many people to please and
> no possible way everyone can communicate everything to each other and
> discuss prior to making a decision on something.

I think many users/testers on this list are experienced and have a good sense
of what is important. If they are not sure about it, the exchange of opinions
here clears up their mind.

Fedora is, according to :
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=fedora

"The Fedora Project is an openly-developed project designed by Red Hat, open for
general participation, led by a meritocracy, following a set of project
objectives. The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community
to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open
source software. Development will be done in a public forum."

Now, I think that Fedora (thru its Red Hat sponsorship) is acting "by ambush" -
that is, there is very little consideration for opinion expressed by users
*prior* to schedule of new major features (projects) to be implemented in next
release.
It is assumed that what Red Hat thinks is good for them, Fedora, and by
simple extrapolation it must be for everybody associated with Fedora (formally
or not).
That's why I said the users and testers are treated instrumentally.

The systemd is an example of a hard push and twisting of facts about others'
participation in adopting it that backfired.
The warnings were coming in advance from users community here. They were
ignored as noice.
Now they are coming even from within Red Hat itself, heavy guns judging by
quality of arguments presented (fundamental and technical).
Clearly, there is something wrong about the process of Fedora development.

Also, Red Hat and Fedora thru their systemd developer Lennart Poettering, and
GNOME 3 devs, together tried to ambush Linux community at large, when they
"proposed" a mutual dependency plan, exclusive to Linux and "screw other UNIX
and Linux distros", in which the role of systemd went far beyond its original
purpose to be a replacement of system init.
That alienated many people from different corners of Linux *and* UNIX domains,
as could be seen in tech magazines and various discussion forums.

I think all these mishaps and encountered resistance are examples of bad PR
for Red Hat and Fedora.

I think there is a need to think about it.
Please take the users and your own people more seriously if you want a viable
community, Fedora distro, and later collect fruits of your past actions.

JB